Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Editor - U.S. of Awesome

The brief was simple: Microsoft wanted to make one video in each of the 50 states. 

What I made from that was U.S. of Awesome, a 50-episode series that zip-lined through Hawaii, swam with manatees in Florida, and climbed glaciers in Alaska while earning over 75 million views and winning multiple advertising industry awards.

The secret to the format was that every episode had to be about DOING something, not going somewhere or seeing something.

This is what made it more than just a travel show and what served as the engine for how we came up with ideas for episodes. 

Visually, I wanted viewers to feel like they were there in-person so I leaned heavily into POV shots. I let 'us' (meaning the camera) get thrown overboard to catch oysters, hung out of the side of a prop plane, and run over by a bulldozer. 

I explained the format to Microsoft as 'highly planned, highly polished chaos' — a phrase that captured the spirit of the show.

I shot and edited the first handful of episodes myself to create a style and a formula that could be tested for feedback on Facebook and Youtube before being recreated on a large scale as I traveled the country producing and directing the shoots while remotely guiding the editors back in NYC. 

This effort took two years and the work of well over one hundred people across the country to make it a reality.